Electric vehicles, hybrid cars and the like are equipped with a power converter that converts direct-current electric power from a power supply into alternating-current electric power in order to drive a driving motor.
A power converter equipped with a plurality of semiconductor modules that have semiconductor elements, and a plurality of bus bars connected to power terminals of the semiconductor modules is disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2010-207059, for example.
In this power converter, the power terminals of the semiconductor modules are connected to the branched-off bus bars.
However, in the power converter disclosed in the document '059, since the bus bars are branched off in order to connect the power terminals of the plurality of semiconductor modules, the shape of the bus bars becomes very complicated.
Therefore, the manufacturing cost becomes high and the ease of assembly is poor.
Moreover, since the bus bars have to be folded or bent in various directions, portions with narrow width to (portion with a small cross-sectional area) are formed in the bus bars, and problems arise that wiring resistance and inductance of the bus bars become high.